Wires Wires Wires!!!!

[potsofclay]

I just got all of my stuff from newegg and I put all of the components in the case. Simple enough (that is, if I actually did it right!). Now I have like a million wires that aren't connected to anything. I'm not sure where they go to. The power supply alone has like 10 wires coming out of it. I'm guessing that most of them go to things like the floppy, cd rom, hard drive, mobo, etc. but there's no manual that came with the PSU that says where they go...

Is there a place where I can go that says exactly where all of the wires go?

My comp:

Rosewill R6AS5-BK Case
Gigabyte DS3 MOBO
EVGA GeForce 7600GT
OCZ GameStream 600W PSU
E6300 C2D
G.SKILL 2GB DDR2 800
ASUS 16X DVD Burner
Windows XP Media Center Edition

... Thanks for the help!

Pots

 

[alcattle]

The motherboard manual has a lot of pictures and charts saying what wires needs to go where. A good PSU manual would have also, but then again Rosewell :lol:

Otherwise look for a general DIY PC guide, it will list steps including wires that need to get hooked up.

DO NOT turn any thing on until you know where erevy wire should go and the ones that do not apply in your rig. The life you save will be your PC's 8O

 

[potsofclay]

DIY PC guide... are there any of those online that I could use that you know of?

 

[Aussie_Dan]

I think there's some good videos on youtube.

 

[Bobsama]

Here's the quick rundown on what the standard wires do...

That's a 20/24 pin connector that gives most of the power to the motherboard. Only 1.

That's a 12V P4 rail, many better power supplies have 2 of these rails (AKA 12v P8). They are used to give additional power to our processors.

That is a power connector for a Serial ATA drive. Most have between 2 and 8 of these, generally 2-4 on less-expensive models.

That's a 4-pin Molex connector. It's used for legacy drives as well as a standard connection for extra power. You can use converters to change 2 Molex into 1 PCIe, 1 Molex into SATA, etc. They're useful and most have 4 to 8 of these.

That is a mini-Molex connector. It is used for floppy disk drives and sometimes other components like high-end deticated sound systems.

That is a power connector for PCIe. Many PSUs still don't have one, though anything about $40+ should have 1. SLI certified means it has 2 to 4 of these for SLIing most high-end graphics cards (the GeForce 7950GX2 and the GeForce 8800GTX both require 2 each).

 

[rammedstein]

the plugs are made for murpheys law, that is all i can say
the right plugs only go in the right socket (unless you force them)

 

[pseudopeon]

This is a banana. Be sure to keep these out of your rig :lol:

 

[potsofclay]

A couple specific questions:

1. I seem to be missing one of the F_PANEL connectors: the "message LED/Power/Sleep LED" one... is that a problem?

2. What is the difference between the "Chip Fan Power (NB_FAN)" connector and the "CPU Fan (CPU_FAN)" connector on the motherboard? Are there two connectors coming from the fan on the processor that go to both of these?

3. For the F_AUDIO connector on the mobo, where does the wire come from that goes to it? I have a sound card PCI in there right now...

4. For the CD_IN connector, do I not plug the wire from the CD-ROM drive into this since I have an "audio in" on my sound card?

5. I have three F_USB Connectors but seem to only have one USB plug. Do I just plug that one in the F_USB1 and leave the other two alone?

Thanks for the help! :lol:

 

[pseudopeon]

1. Isn't really an issue, just an extra LED on your case to indicate what power-mode it's in.

2. Each connector will drive a different fan, CPU_FAN for your CPU fan (durr!) and NB_FAN for a northbridge fan (if you have one).

3. For if you have front-audio plugs on your case.

4. Don't bother with this one, a relic

5. For case USB ports, if your case only has one connector, you can only connect one up

 

[blunc]

an important word of caution:

if you are installing a SATA drive, connect only one power supply connector to the drive. some drives have the legacy connector (4 pin molex) on the hard drive and a new SATA power connector. you can kill the drive if you connect the SATA and the 4-pin molex to the drive at the same time.

I know this because I had to diagnose/fix a rig that this was done to, a new 250gb drive had to be replaced.

 

[zjohnr]

Everything PseudoPeon said was correct. But I felt maybe you might appreciate a few more details in some cases so here goes ...

1. I seem to be missing one of the F_PANEL connectors: the "message LED/Power/Sleep LED" one... is that a problem?

1. Isn't really an issue, just an extra LED on your case to indicate what power-mode it's in.
It seems some cases can provide the more complicated "message LED/Power/Sleep LED" indicator light. Your case does not. (Neither does mine ... don't know of any that do, but I guess they're out there). Just hook up the "power LED" connector and don't worry about the other.

BTW, the lights on the display are LEDs or "Light Emitting Diodes". The key word there is "diode" which is an electrical device which only allows current to flow in (essentially) one direction. Try to correctly match the polarity of the wires to the pins when you connect the LEDs or they won't work. If after you get things assembled and things are working but the power and/or hard drive lights on the case don't work, check to make sure the polarity is correct.

2. What is the difference between the "Chip Fan Power (NB_FAN)" connector and the "CPU Fan (CPU_FAN)" connector on the motherboard? Are there two connectors coming from the fan on the processor that go to both of these?

2. Each connector will drive a different fan, CPU_FAN for your CPU fan (durr!) and NB_FAN for a northbridge fan (if you have one).
Hook the CPU fan up to the CPU_FAN connector. I assume you're using the stock heatsink/fan which came with your processor, correct? It has a 4-pin connector which will match the pins on the CPU_FAN header.

The DS3 does not come with a fan for the Northbridge (the heatsink next to the CPU), but some of us still prefer to slap a fan on top of the Northbridge. If you do, then you can connect it to the NB_FAN header. The Scythe Mini-Kaze is a popular choice. Newegg sells it for $3 but will charge you $5 to ship it.

Note 1: Don't freak out if when you turn on the power your CPU fan does not spin or only does an intermittent jerky motion. The default in the DS3 BIOS for the CPU fan are to only run the fan when the detected CPU temperature is "high enough". My suggestion is to go into the BIOS when the system comes up and change the CPU fan settings to use the Intel control method rather than "legacy". If you do this then the fan will always spin at a minimum of 800 RPM.

Note 2: Also don't freak out if when you change something in the BIOS the system powers off and then on again when it reboots ... so long as it only does this once . Apparently it is normal. I guess in some cases the BIOS needs a complete power off in order to process changes to some of the BIOS settings.

3. For the F_AUDIO connector on the mobo, where does the wire come from that goes to it? I have a sound card PCI in there right now...

3. For if you have front-audio plugs on your case.
It's for the integrated sound on your motherboard. There are probably also connectors on your PCI sound card for this also. I haven't even bothered to try to figure out how to hook this up yet. If you did want to connect it you'd probably need to look at the pin-out diagrams in the DS3's manual. It would be how you would connect the microphone and headphone outputs next to the USB at the base of your case.

4. For the CD_IN connector, do I not plug the wire from the CD-ROM drive into this since I have an "audio in" on my sound card?

4. Don't bother with this one, a relic
By relic, I'm guessing PseudoP means that these days no one even bothers to connect the analog CD_OUT on your optical drive to the analog CD_IN on your sound card or, in this case, motherboard. Instead, the sound signal is extracted and passed directly to the sound subsystem in digital form.

5. I have three F_USB Connectors but seem to only have one USB plug. Do I just plug that one in the F_USB1 and leave the other two alone?

5. For case USB ports, if your case only has one connector, you can only connect one up
Yeah. I also have two unused USB connectors. I'm still looking around to try to find a (reasonably priced) way to hook those up. :roll:

According to the specs on newegg, your OCZ GameXStream OCZ600GXSSLI ATX12V 600W PSU has the connectors listed below. I tried to indicate which of them would be connected based on your components.

1 x 20+4-pin ATX Connected.
1 x 4-pin/8-pin CPU Apparently you get two 4-pin connectors. Only one of them would be connected since the DS3 motherboard only has a single 4-pin CPU power socket.
2 x PCI-Express Not connected. Your 7600GT video card doesn't use this.
6 x 4-pin peripheral Your optical drive would use one of these. What do you have (PATA or SATA?) as the hard drive(s)?
2 x 4-pin floppy It looks like you don't have anything that would use these.
6 x SATA Only used if you have one or more SATA hard drives.

I suggest buying some cable ties and tying up the unsed cables and tucking them out of the way.

-john, the ostensibly clueless redundant legacy-in-transition dinosaur
(Edited just to clean up some loose ends. No significant changes. )

 

[pseudopeon]

Thanks for adding detail to my post, zjohnr
Was a little short on time when I wrote it :roll:

 

[slim142]

This is a banana. Be sure to keep these out of your rig :lol:

Muahahaha

 

[potsofclay]

Thanks for the detailed responses!

My hard drive right now is an IDE.

You said my video card (which is PCI-E) doesn't use the PCI-Express plug from the PSU, can you explain this?

Also, once I get everything plugged in and start it up for the first time (man am I going to be nervous...), do I go directly into the BIOS? Do I start it up with the XP disk in it?

Thanks!

 

[billdcat4]

Thanks for the detailed responses!

My hard drive right now is an IDE.

You said my video card (which is PCI-E) doesn't use the PCI-Express plug from the PSU, can you explain this?

Also, once I get everything plugged in and start it up for the first time (man am I going to be nervous...), do I go directly into the BIOS? Do I start it up with the XP disk in it?

Thanks!

The 7600GT is a very power consious card and gets all of its power from teh PCIExpress x16 slot, and doesnt require extra power from a 6 pin.

Good luck

 

[pseudopeon]

All you need to do is pop the WinXP CD in and it should autorun at startup, then you'll be well on your way to wrestling with drivers/updates/WinXP in general!

 

[knowsitall]

IF YOU CANT BUILD IT, BURN IT!!

 

[Mondoman]

...
Also, once I get everything plugged in and start it up for the first time (man am I going to be nervous...), do I go directly into the BIOS?...

I would do that, just to set the time and date correctly, verify that CPU/other temps look OK (assuming your BIOS has such monitoring), make sure the HD and optical drive were detected correctly, and so forth.

 

[skyguy]

John, an easy and cheap way to use those USB0 and USB1 ports on your mobo is something like these (I know it's Canadian, but I can't quickly find this on the Egg, sorry...but you get the idea):

USB bracket for rear usage:
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=14460ST5109&vpn=CBL-0041-01&manufacture=SUPERMICRO

Drive bay for front usage, basic:
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=13130MM2699&vpn=NG-35INT-BG-FR&manufacture=NGEAR

Drive bay, more features:
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=10240AC4110&vpn=COOLPANEL-SIL&manufacture=AEROCOOL

 

[skyguy]

John, an easy and cheap way to use those USB0 and USB1 ports on your mobo is something like these (I know it's Canadian, but I can't quickly find this on the Egg, sorry...but you get the idea):

USB bracket for rear usage:
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=14460ST5109&vpn=CBL-0041-01&manufacture=SUPERMICRO

Drive bay for front usage, basic:
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=13130MM2699&vpn=NG-35INT-BG-FR&manufacture=NGEAR

Drive bay, more features:
http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=10240AC4110&vpn=COOLPANEL-SIL&manufacture=AEROCOOL

 

[zjohnr]

You said my video card (which is PCI-E) doesn't use the PCI-Express plug from the PSU, can you explain this?

What's to explain about "It doesn't use it"? The 7600GT (thankfully!) doesn't need huge gobs of power to run. This is a good thing, no?

Also, once I get everything plugged in and start it up for the first time (man am I going to be nervous...), do I go directly into the BIOS? Do I start it up with the XP disk in it?

My suggestion would be to start very slow and build up gradually. By that I mean start with the bare minimum installed that you need to allow the system to boot. The processor and its HSF, 1 stick of DDR2, and the video card. (Heck, if you had an old/cheap PCI based video card laying around, I'd suggest using it rather than your 7600GT, but that's probably not an option for you).

Before you hit the power button, position a finger of one hand on the PSU rocker switch so you can kill power immediately if you see sparks, smell smoke, whatever. None of us really expect this to happen. It's just a precaution.

When the system comes up, go into the BIOS and poke around a bit to familiarize yourself with it. Also make a note of which version of the BIOS is installed. I'd also suggest changing the options for the fan so it'll run at at least 800 RPM ... tends to make most folks feel better to see the CPU fan spinning.

Once you've booted with the min components and verified the CPU temps look good, you can start adding components. Me, I just swap the RAM sticks to make sure the other stick works on its own. Then I boot with both sticks. The last thing I'd do is to boot with your PATA optical and PATA hard drive connected and powered.

After you boot to the BIOS with all the components connected and verified that the BIOS is correctly recognizing your optical and hard drives, then you can boot the XP install CD, if you want. But you might also want to boot something like Memtest 86+ and run it for a bit, just as a sanity check.

You can also just boot with everything connected the first time. The approach I outlined above is probably more cautious than needed. I may be weird that way. Heck, I didn't actually get the entire system assembled into the case until almost two weeks after I got it. I spent that much time playing around with it with all the components and wires spread out on a workbench (... well, ok, folding table actually). It was that "getting to know you" phase of the relationship and I wanted to make it last.

-john, the ostensibly clueless legacy-in-transition dinosaur

 

[zjohnr]

John, an easy and cheap way to use those USB0 and USB1 ports on your mobo is something like these ...

Thanks. Yes, something like the rear USB bracket was what I was thinking of, but I was not having any luck coming up with Google search keywords which would turn up sites to buy it from in the US. Thanks for your suggestions. This will help give me ideas on what to look for.

IMO the problem when buying any of this stuff is getting it at a reasonable price once shipping is included. :roll: Oh, well ...

-john

 

[potsofclay]

ok, got back from work and put a few things together thanks to you guys... it looks like I'm almost done but I have a couple last questions:

1. From my PSU I have two wires that say CPU1 and CPU2 that look like ATX 12V connectors. Where do these go?

2. I also have from my PSU a "Main" connector and a "24" connector the latter being a 12V ATX. Do I have to plug both of these into the mobo? I know where they would go on there, I just don't know if I have to plug BOTH of them in...

3. I have 1 IDE slot on my mobo and I have two IDE drives (my DVD-Burner and my IDE HD). Do I set the HD to Master and my DVD-Burner to Slave? And when I use the same cable, do I plug in the first connector to the Burner, the middle one to my hard drive and the last (blue) one to the mobo? At least that's what looks like the best way to phangle it without twisting the crapola out of the cable!

4. As for my sound card, the only thing I have plugged into it right now is the digital audio output (2 pin thin cord, looks like a jumper) from the DVD-Burner to the card. What else should be connected to the card?

I think that's it right now. I really appreciate your help!!! I'm having a lot of fun and learning a lot (even though anxiety is coarsing through my veins at the same time!)

Thanks - Pots

 

[potsofclay]

I think I have the answer to #1 in my last post... I'm assuming I just use the first of these two wires and plug it into the mobo...

Still have questions on the other items though :?

 

[fender22]

This is a banana. Be sure to keep these out of your rig :lol:

LMAO!!